"Freedom to convert" is counterproductive as a generalized doctrine. It fails to come to terms with the complex interrelationships between self and society that make the concept of individual choice meaningful. Hence, religious conversion undermines, and in extremes would dissolve, that individual autonomy and human freedom.

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Monday, October 15, 2007

Over 90% of America's churches remain segregated- American Academician

There are many white christian denominations/sects in the USA, especially in the southern and some midwestern states, that will not allow the mixing of whites and blacks in their churches for ideological reasons. According to many of these white churches and their leaders, the ideology of whte surpemacy is strongly rooted in the christian bible.

Among Mormons (Latter Day Saints),for example, a sect of christianity found predominatly in the state of Utah, the common view held and propounded by their church, until the 1970s was that blacks were inferior beings created by God as an act of punishment. According to the Mormon view, the blacks could go to heaven, but only as servants of the whites (obviously there was a ''servant' entrance and 'employer' entrance). Although the law outlawed this blatant racist views and practices, these views/prejudices continue to dominate the daily lives of the Mormon christians to this day.

The Dutch Reformed Church was responsible for instituting the apartheid system in south Africa. The architect of the Apartheid system (social and physical segregation of non-whites), Daniel Francois Malan, was himself a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church. They based their reasoning for segregation of non-whites from the whites in the bible. When international pressure and criticism against south africa's apartheid mounted in the 1970s and 1980s, the resistence to dismantling the apartheid system came from the Dutch Reformed church itself